Once a Miler

Suddenly speedy Billy Orman breaks AZ 1600m record

Ten days ago at Mesa Community College in Phoenix, Tuba City senior Billy Orman sat drooping at trackside after winning the Arizona state meet Division 3 1600m race. He had an icy wet t-shirt on his head and was trying to get fluids down while a meet volunteer waved a makeshift fan in his face to create a breeze. Orman was vomiting, had a severe headache and, his father said, was about to faint.

“It was the worst I’ve felt after a race,” Orman said last week after his dazzling state meet distance sweep of a 4:06.75 1600m and 8:48.63 3200m, the fastest double in the nation this season. Then he paused to broaden his assessment beyond competition. “It was the worst I’ve felt — ever.”

On the state meet’s opening day, Orman had shocked himself and others by not only running a 5-second 1600m PR with one of fastest times in the country this season, but by doing it in scorching conditions, even for Phoenix. “It was 100 degrees and not a cloud in the sky,” said Billy’s father, Bill Orman, a pediatrician. “I expected kids to be fainting. As a physician, I was worried.”

The Division 3 1600m event, Orman’s race, went off at 4:30 p.m., in the heat of the day. Orman flew out to a 60-second opening lap with Alejandro Montano of Catalina Magnet on his shoulder. “Oh, my God!” his father thought. “What are they doing?” The pace slowed a touch through the 800 and 1200. On the third lap, Orman’s feet started to burn. But he was able to close with another 60-second lap to come within a fraction of the state record. Montoya also collected a PR (4:12.88) in second. “I didn’t know I was that fit,” Orman said.

Surprise Miler Makes His MarkHe didn’t know that he was a miler either. Though Orman had run an early season 4:12, he’d started the spring season with a 4:19 PR and, his dad said, “never really paid attention to the 1600.” In fact, said Dr. Orman, the Tuba City coach had told his son, in effect: you’re no a miler, you’re too slow, you’re going to be a 10K guy.

And Billy seemed to accept that. After placing sixth in the Foot Locker cross country nationals 5K last December in San Diego, Orman set out to re-build his base over the winter with a series of 60-mile training weeks. Even though Orman did his share of sprint work like 200m repeats, there was still no consensus that Orman had acquired the speed to be a national-caliber miler. All along, his goal had been the 3200 and the Arizona state record of 8:50.24 set in 1983 by Jeff Canada. In April, Orman ran the big Arcadia Invitational 3200 in California, and despite taking ill with a fever before the race, he placed fifth in 8:55.79.

The state mark sat there waiting for Orman’s next attempt, which came on May 14 during the second half of his state meet double. Orman felt no lasting effect from the previous day’s heat, nor, he said, any fatigue from the hard 1600. Remarkably, he felt fresh. When the 3200 went off at 9:30 p.m., conditions were ideal — cool, dry, no wind. Orman raced to the state record with room to spare, and without any competition, as Montano again placed second, well up the track in 9:20.92.

Pumping Up With PoetryOrman, a straight-A student bound for Harvard — he has prepared for races by reading the T.S. Eliot poem, “The Waste Land” — took another crack at the state 1600m mark (4:06.44, also by Canada) at the state Meet of Champions in Phoenix last Saturday.

But because of Tuba City graduation ceremonies Saturday morning, meet officials had to make some accommodations and move the 1600 to the last event so Orman could compete. Tuba City is situated about 225 miles north of Phoenix, which is nearly 4 hours by car.

Despite the challenges, Orman got the record late Saturday night. Again running alone, he ran a blistering 4:05.29.

While Orman’s 3200 time was fastest in the country as of last weekend, and his 1600 made him the second-fastest in that event, his postseason plans will be limited to the Midwest Distance Gala, June 11, in Lisle, Ill., where he’ll run the mile or 2-mile.

Though Orman’s 4:05.29 effort in the 1600 would have likely earned him Jim Ryun Dream Mile consideration, that event, in New York’s adidas Grand Prix meet, is also June 11. Consequently, Orman will miss out on a chance to race the ballyhooed defender, Lukas Verzbicas, and shoot for fast times in what will likely be a high school sub-4:00 attempt.

Verzbicas Set For Dream Mile FinaleVerzbicas has indicated that he will also wrap up his track season on June 11. The New York mile will be his second marquee race in two weeks. The previous week, on June 4 in Eugene, Verzbicas will run the Prefontaine Classic professional 2-mile, with an attempt at the national high school record (8:34.40). The 2-mile will feature a cavalcade of Kenyan and Ethiopian superstars as well as top Americans Galen Rupp, Chris Solinsky, Matt Tegenkamp and Bernard Lagat, whom Verzbicas raced in his indoor 2-mile record attempt (8:43.24, the first of two near-misses) in February.

After the Dream Mile, Verzbicas will go back to multisport training for the world junior triathlon championships in Beijing in September. That event will coincide with Verzbicas starting his college career at Oregon. It remains to be seen whether he runs freshman cross country.

In addition to Orman, Xavier College Prep soph Sarah Fakler also raced to an Arizona state 1600/3200 double with Division 4 marks of 4:54.39 and 10:35.48. In the latter, she led an Xavier sweep of the top four places as Daylee Burr (10:59.46), Brianna Perrone (11:01.12) and Shelby Brown (11:02.42) finished 2-3-4.

That distance depth would be the envy of any girls’ team, even those in the New York hotbed, continued to be ruled by Fayetteville-Manlius. A week after their Penn Relays distance medley relay triumph, the Stotan girls were gobbling up points at the upstate Oneida meet. Their victors included Heather Martin in the 800m (2:12.73) and Courtney Chapman in the 1500m (4:34.33) as well freshman Natalie Zazzara in the 200m (26.47) — a future F-M cross-country runner? Who knows?

Speaking of cross country (for some teams, summer training is but weeks away), Fayetteville coach Bill Aris reports that his 2010 Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) championship runner-up, junior Christie Rutledge — who has not competed at all in track this year — is rounding into shape after rebounding from a late-winter sacro iliac joint problem. Rutledge will be looking to deepen her base for the fall, when her racing resumes.

NY Girls Continue Hot PaceThe Penn Relays individual stars from the fast girls’ 3,000m, winner Haley Pierce of Delaware and runner-up New Yorker Aisling Cuffe, are on a collision course for a New Balance Nationals 2-mile rematch next month. Pierce, a Tatnall junior, won her county meet 1600m two weeks ago in 4:41.19. Cuffe, a Cornwall senior, doubled at the venerable Loucks Games, setting NY state records in both the 1600 (4:40.56) and 3200 (9:56.16).

The 1600s by Cuffe and Pierce stand 1-2 in the nation. Cuffe’s 3200 is No. 1 in the nation by 10 seconds. New York girls, led by Bronxville super-frosh Mary Cain, also rank 1-2-3 in the 1500. Both Cain’s 4:23.1 1500, and her 9:28.6 3,000, are state freshmen records.

New York boys have been no less unrelenting as Chad Noelle (Greene) won the Loucks’ 3200m in 8:56.02 while Liverpool junior Zavon Watkins captured the 800m in 1:50.61 and 1600m in 4:11.13. Meanwhile, the magical New Jersey soph Edward Cheserek anchored St. Benedict’s Prep to three winning relays at Loucks. They included a 10:07.20 distance medley in which Cheserek ran a 4:09.2 1600m anchor. In an earlier meet, he’d run a 4:05.8 1600m leg (along with a 1:50.2 800m carry) and no one would be surprised if Cheserek gave Verzbicas a race to remember in the Jim Ryun mile (as he did indoors in the nationals 2-mile).

Among the other landmark performances next month could be a boys’ 4x1600m national record at New Balance Nationals, where Christian Brothers of New Jersey, the Penn Relays distance medley winners, could erase the 25-year-old mark of 17:04.7 set by McCullough (now The Woodlands) in 1986. At their recent county meet, CBA runners placed 1-2-3-5 in the 1600m with times that add up to 17:09.19. However, the Colts’ top man, sub-4:10 performer Mike Mazzaccaro, just ran a measured 4:16.42 to pace the pack.

The Woodlands’ girls have garnered many honors of their own but few bigger than two weeks ago in the Texas state 5A 3200m, in which Madi McLellon defeated 2010 NXN champion Rachel Johnson of Plano, 10:33.86 to 10:36.08. The boys’ 5A 3200m went to 2009 NXN winner Craig Lutz of Marcus in a snappy 8:52.91.

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